Wars and Warfare

The future of the Japan–South Korea relationship depends on the ability of their leaders to address the past and to build a new partnership based on mutual understanding and trust, writes CFR's Scott Snyder.

The seventieth anniversary of the end of World War II is being marked in Northeast Asia by efforts to refresh—and revise—understandings of the brutal twentieth century war that laid the foundations of modern Asia, writes CFR's Sheila Smith.

Over the past decade, a string of war movies emerged in the wake of 9/11: The Hurt Locker, Syriana, The Messenger, Green Zone, Lone Survivor, and American Sniper, to name just a few. Some have performed better than others at the box office, and many have received critical acclaim. Almost none has included portrayals of women in combat.

Japan experienced unparalleled destruction by U.S. military forces in 1945 in the last months of World War II, resulting in its complete capitulation. Washington played a decisive role in Tokyo's postwar reconstruction, but the legacy of Japan's wartime actions continues to be a source of tension with its Asia Pacific neighbors.

On March 17, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won reelection, thanks in part to a desperate last-minute pledge to his right-wing base that the Palestinians would never get a state so long as he was in power. After the election, he tried to walk his comments back, but Palestinian observers weren’t buying it.

Until recently, most Europeans believed that their post–Cold War security order held universal appeal and could be a model for the rest of the world. This conviction was hardly surprising, since Europe has often played a central role in global affairs. For much of the last three centuries, European order was world order—a product of the interests, ambitions, and rivalries of the continent’s empires.

Department of Defense released a Law of War Manual that applies to all services on June 12, 2015. The document discusses law of war publications produced previously by different services within the military.

Congress is now debating President Obama’s proposed Authorization for the Use of Limited Military Force to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Yet the president’s request for this action from Congress comes more than six months after U.S. aircraft began bombing ISIS positions in Iraq and Syria, and even if passed it is merely an authorization for the use of force, not a full-fledged state of war, which Congress has not passed since World War II.

Imagine President Franklin Roosevelt announcing at the end of 1944, after the liberation of France but before the final defeat of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, that World War II was over and that U.S. forces were ending combat operations. Instead we would support our allies, from Britain to China, in their fight against the Axis powers.

For more than a decade now, U.S. soldiers have been laboring under a sad paradox: even though the United States enjoys unprecedented global military dominance that should cow enemies mightily, it has found itself in constant combat for longer than ever before in its history, and without much to show for it.

The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead once remarked that the history of European philosophy consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. For Ian Morris, world history may be understood as a series of footnotes to Thomas Hobbes.

Max Boot details a comprehensive strategy to defeat ISIS by committing to the fight on multiple fronts: intensify air strikes, utilize U.S. personnel and capabilities, encourage local and regional partners, and prepare for nation-building.

Henry A. Kissinger, chairman of Kissinger Associates, former U.S. Secretary of State, and former assistant to the president for national affairs, joins CFR President Richard N. Haass to discuss Kissinger's role in the Cold War.

CFR's Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, Robert D. Blackwill, Vitaly Churkin, permanent representative of the Russian Federation to the United Nations, and Frank Elbe, former director of German Foreign Minister Hans-Deitrich Genscher's cabinet, join Mary Elise Sarotte of Harvard University to discuss the factors and steps that led to the end of the Cold War.

Henry A. Kissinger, chairman of Kissinger Associates, former U.S. Secretary of State, and former assistant to the president for national affairs, joins CFR President Richard N. Haass to discuss Kissinger's role in the Cold War.